Saturday, 22 October 2011

Blizzcon : Heart of The Swarm

Heart of The Swarm : Expansion for Starcraft 2

Ok, this is really exciting, Ihave been waiting a long time for this. Blizzard has finally release a preview of the new units and abilities in Heart of the Swarm. Here is a video preview, near the end of this video you will see the new units.

Protoss New Units for Heart of theSwarm:

Protoss have their Mothership and Carrier removed, and replaced by this new units. Although this is the initial preview so changes might be made in the future.

Tempest:

The tempest is an aerial unit. It does aerial splash attack and is good against light armored units such as Mutalisk. It also has a ground attack. the role of this unit is to gain air superiority;

Oracle

The Oracle is built from the Stargate. Its main role is to raid and harass the enemy. Among its abilities are that its able to block certain mineral patches from being mined (the ability is called Entomb). The other ability called Preordain provides vision of a targeted enemy building, allowing the player to ses what technologies are being researched and what units are being build. It can also disable building like missile turrets from attacking.

Replicant

The Replicant is essentially a shape shifter. It can shape shift to whatever units it chooses. In the demo, it shape shifts into a Terran Siege Tank. It will acquire whatever upgrade that the units have.

New Abilities
The Nexus now have 2 new abilities:
1. Arc Shield : Adds a shield to buildings and allows it to attack light units
2. Mass Recall : Nexus can now cast mass recall;

Retired Units

Mothership and Carriers

Terran New Units for Heart of theSwarm:

Terran has some few units added.

Shredder

The Shredder is built from the factory. It can channel an area of attack damage like a whirlwind. It damages both air and ground units. However, if there is a friendly unit nearby, the attack will stop.

Warhound

The Warhound is a mech much like Thor. Since Thor is limited, this unit might replace it. the difference between Warhound and Thor is that it is much more smaller and nimble. It does attack both ground and air units.

The Thor is limited to one at a time, similar to a mothership. It is bigger and slightly better. Its attack does splash damage. And for the time being, it does not have any air attack.

New Abilities

1. Helion : Helion can now transform from mobile to siege mode. It gains armor but loses mobility.

Zerg New Units for Heart of theSwarm:

Zerg has some few units added.

Viper

The Viper is another support unit for Zerg.It has the Blinding Cloud ability that prevents range units from attacking and casting spells, similar to Dark Swarm from Starcraft 1. the second ability is Abduct. This ability is like a grappling hook that pulls both friendly unit or foe to the Viper location. You can use this unit to kill running Colossus or save your units from being killed.

Swarm Host

Swarm Host is a slow moving unit. Upon burrowing, the Swarm Host can spawns locusts to attack enemies.

New Abilities

Siphon : new ability for Corruptor, this ability allows Corruptor to target buildings and slowly damage them.The damage is converted to resources for the Zerg. 1 resource per second roughly.

Burrow Charge :new ability for the Ultralisk, The Ultralisk burrow and pops up at the target location damaging units.

Baneling : Can now move while burrowed!!!

Hydralisk : now has a new upgrade that allows it to move faster off creep